Is Hoffman the new century’s Belushi?

All the reports these days about the death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman have been bringing about three-decade old memories of that moment when we learned that actor John Belushi had died.

Because the ultimate story of both of their lives will turn out to be the same – someone who let their drug use get the best of them, while taking out a talent that will make us all speculate for years to come just how much more would we have been entertained from future productions that will never be made!

NOW I KNOW that the two don’t have identical life and career cycles.

Belushi – born in the Humboldt Park neighborhood and raised in suburban Wheaton – only got into five film productions before his 1982 death at age 33. Hoffman, by comparison, appeared in about 60 film roles prior to passing on at age 46.

There are many aspiring actors who would love to have a career anywhere as extensive as Hoffman’s. And they’d certainly fall sort of the Academy Award Hoffman took for his starring role in “Capote.”

Heck, Belushi never came close – although I suspect the image of him as “Bluto” in Animal House sticks out in some peoples’ minds as much as any Oscar-winning role.

ULTIMATELY, IT’S GOING to be the end of their stories that will draw comparisons.

A woman wound up doing prison time for being the one who allegedly gave Belushi an injection into his arm (a “speedball” cocaine and heroin mixture, if memory is correct) that caused him to die at a borderline raunchy hotel in Hollywood.

While in the case of Hoffman, we’re going to forever live with the image of his body being found with a hypodermic needle still sticking in it. Police also found something anywhere between 40 and 70 bags of heroin in his apartment (depending on which newspaper account you read).

They’re still investigating to see if the heroin was mixed with the pain reliever fentanyl. This will be the trivial detail people will remember for years to come when Hoffman’s name comes up.

AND HIS NAME will come up, because the man had so many roles in a variety of films. It wasn’t just “Capote,” or the other films (“Charlie Wilson’s War,” “Doubt” and “The Master”) for which he was nominated for Oscars.

In fact, films I most associate with him were ones where he had supporting roles, such as “The Big Lebowski,” “Moneyball” and “Almost Famous.” His take on the 1970s rock journalist Lester Bangs is a bit part more memorable than many starring roles these days.

Just as I consider Belushi in “Continental Divide” to be an underrated role – even if the only thing believable about his portrayal as a newspaper columnist was a certain aversion to the outdoors.

But to a certain degree, none of this is going to matter. Both of their lives were cut short by the substance abuse. Both of them struggled with the drugs during their lives, and ultimately became a little too wrapped up in them.

TO THE DEGREE that when Washington-based journalist Bob Woodward tried to take on the Hollywood culture, his biography of Belushi turned into a final third of the book that was a blow-by-blow account of all the drugs he consumed in the final couple of weeks of his life.

Is this what we’re destined to get in coming weeks and months, as more details come out about the sordidness of Hoffman’s drug use (which he tried to resist, but ultimately gave in to)?
 

Let’s only hope the collective bodies of work for the two will not get buried in the minutia!

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Do we really mourn the loss of Chad Bradford/Moneyball on the Sout’ Side?

Monday was a day of reminiscing about baseball and what “could have been,” but not in the way that might be expected.

For it was a day in which I managed to have a few spare hours and chose to catch a film – specifically, “Moneyball,” the film starring Brad Pitt and based on Michael Lewis’ book that glorifies the Oakland Athletics of the early 2000s as a ballclub that revolutionized the way people thought of baseball.

SUPPOSEDLY, ONE OF the reasons why general manager Billy Beane was successful was that he recognized the potential for greatness in pitcher Chad Bradford at a time when many baseball people thought of him as some sort of physical freak who would never amount to much.

And in the film, the Bradford character (played by actor Casey Bond) has a scene where he approaches Pitt’s Beane and thanks him for being the lone baseball person who takes him seriously as a ballplayer.

The film doesn’t get into some of the background that the book does – in which Lewis skewers the team that had Bradford and didn’t use him on any regular basis and also treats that ballclub’s minor league director as some sort of nitwit who will forever be fleeced by smart guys like Beane.

That team, of course, is the Chicago White Sox, and their executive is the guy who now is general manager – Ken Williams.

NOW I KNOW White Sox fans get defensive about this particular view, in large part because it isn’t really all that accurate.

Bradford never did get a serious shot at sticking with the “big club” after playing in the White Sox’ minor league system in the late 1990s. Personally, I can remember seeing him pitch twice for the White Sox in games I attended.

One was a late-season blowout, and the other was a brief appearance in the playoffs (giving up two base hits in two-thirds of an inning pitched) against the Seattle Mariners, who ultimately lost the playoffs to the eventual World Series champion New York Yankees that season.

But it wasn’t until he was traded to Oakland that someone was willing to take him seriously enough to use him regularly, and in situations where he would be thought of as the team’s top relief pitcher – rather than just someone who could get a stray hitter or two out in mid-game.

YET IT’S NOT like Bradford went on to a career of Hall of Fame proportions (although he did play for playoff-bound teams in Oakland and Tampa Bay, along with those 2000 White Sox).

There also is the fact that the main ballplayer the White Sox got in a trade for Bradford was catcher Miguel Olivo – who went on to be the team’s primary catcher for a couple of seasons before he became trade bait to Seattle.

That was how the White Sox got pitcher Freddy Garcia in 2004, and who the following year became one of their reliable starting pitchers in that World Series-winning season of ’05.

There are those of us who would think that Garcia’s shutout victory over the Houston Astros that won the fourth (and final) game of the 2005 World Series was a bigger moment than anything Bradford accomplished for any ballclub (even though his Tampa Bay Rays team of 2008 also played – but lost – in the World Series).

I REALIZE THAT films have to oversimplify facts to keep the story straight and tell six months of activity in a two-hour time period. But seeing Chad Bradford portrayed as some sort of baseball savior just struck me as being a bit of a stretch.

Not that this should be interpreted as Bradford-bashing. Because the sight of Bradford’s “submarine-style” of throwing (underhand, with his knuckles at times appearing to scrape the dirt of the pitcher’s mound) is one of those things a baseball fan doesn’t forget – particularly in that late-season game where I actually got a lower deck seat right behind home plate.

It is one of those minor moments that will stand out in my mind as why baseball can be beautiful, and why it is more important than the realm of percentages that it naturally creates (and the assortment of new percentages that some fans are determined to impose on the game).

One other moment of the film cracked me up once I realized what was going on.

THOSE OAKLAND ATHLETICS teams of the early 2000s were successful in part because the traditional ways of scouting ballplayers had uncovered a star shortstop from the Dominican Republic in Miguel Tejada.

That meant that this film, in its occasional scenes of baseball being played, had to have someone at shortstop wearing a “Tejada, number 4” jersey.

He doesn’t have any lines, but the “actor” who played Tejada was none other than former White Sox shortstop Royce Clayton.

Not that any White Sox fans want to be reminded of Clayton, who hit so badly during his two-year stint in Chicago that it took something of the historic characteristics of Adam Dunn’s 2011 season to overcome it.

THEN AGAIN, I still remember sitting in the left field seats at the ballgame in which Clayton’s batting average for the season dropped to .099, when he managed to get a bloop base hit that didn’t even make it past third base – resulting in a group of fans sitting behind home plate to taunt him with their mocking chant of “M-V-P.”

It may have been rude, yet it was another of those amusing little moments that make baseball fun to watch – and which no amount of stat-geek math (I take the stolen base and defense more seriously than they do) can overwhelm.

  -30-

EDITOR'S NOTE: I stand by my previously-expressed thoughts that anybody who thinks the release of Ozzie Guillen as manager of the White Sox means the team is fixed is being foolish. I can easily see 2012 being an equally-abhorrent season, only with a non-descript manager. Buddy Bell?!??